The Belarusian Fate of Suprasl Archimandrite Nikolai (Dalmatov)

Abstract

Among the large number of clergymen from the Great Russian provinces sent to the Belarusian lands after the liquidation of the Brest Church Union in 1839 and the mass conversion of the local Belarusian Uniate population to Orthodoxy, Archimandrite Nikolai (Dalmatov) of Suprasl Monastery (1835–1906) stands out for his special services not only to the church, but also to Belarusian culture as a whole. In the late XIX – early XX centuries he laid the practical and scientific foundations for the current revival of the ancient Suprasl Monastery of the Annunciation, Suprasl Lavra, which is currently the largest Orthodox center not only in Poland, but also in the countries of the European Union. The son of a deacon from the Oryol hinterland, a graduate of the Oryol seminary, Archimandrite Nikolai served for more than forty years, since 1860, in the Belarusian Orthodox environment, in Slutsk, Pinsk, Minsk and, finally, in the Suprasl, where since 1881 he becomes the rector of the Annunciation Monastery and “dean of the monasteries of the Lithuanian diocese”. His multifaceted quarter-century activity in the Suprasl to restore monastic life as well as his preaching work among the local population, the creation of the successfully operating Suprasl Annunciation Brotherhood earned Archimandrite Nicholas well-deserved recognition and even love not only, as he himself wrote, of his “good Belarusians”, but also of Roman Catholics, and especially Jews. He defended these “our neighbors, our fellow citizens” in his fiery sermons against the “Jewish pogroms” in every possible way as a Christian and an Orthodox pastor. A thoughtful researcher of the history of Belarusian monasteries, temples and monuments of writing, Archimandrite Nikolai also left a rich body of published scholarly works, the main component of which was his voluminous monograph “Supraslsky Annunciation Monastery: Historical and Statistical description” (St. Petersburg, 1892), which remains to this day the key work on the subject and has not lost its significance.

Received 9 April 2024

Revised 30 May 2024

Accepted 9 June 2024

For citation: Labyncev, Ju. A., Shchavinskaja, L.L., 2024. The Belarusian fate of Suprasl archimandrite Nikolai (Dalmatov). Slavic World in the Third Millennium, 19 (1–2), pp. 25–41. https://doi.org/10.31168/2412-6446.2024.19.1-2.02